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Movies like Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats) (1984)

The best movies like Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats) (1984) are Come Sunday (2018), Hounddog (2008) and All Day and a Night (2020). If Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats) hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.

Quick picks

  1. Come Sunday (2018)

    Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

  2. Hounddog (2008)

    A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  3. All Day and a Night (2020)

    While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  4. Home (2021)

    An ex-felon returns home from prison and must confront the demons of his past.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  5. The River (1984)

    Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  6. Hungry Hearts (2015)

    The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  7. What Maisie Knew (2013)

    In New York City, six-year-old Maisie is caught in the middle of a bitter custody battle between her self-absorbed parents—an aging rock singer mother and a distracted art dealer father. As both quickly marry new partners to strengthen their legal standing, Maisie is shuttled back and forth in an endless game of emotional point-scoring. Yet amid the chaos and upheaval, Maisie begins to find true comfort and affection in her new step-parents.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Worth the HypeMovies like this
  8. El Chicano (2019)

    A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  9. Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)

    A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Worth the HypeMovies like this
  10. Imperial Dreams (2014)

    A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  11. Most (2003)

    A poetic and powerful story of a father forced to choose between love and duty.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Worth the HypeMovies like this
  12. Salomé (2013)

    After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  13. Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998)

    Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Worth the HypeMovies like this
  14. The Young One (1960)

    A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Worth the HypeMovies like this
  15. Hardball (2001)

    An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  16. Skin (2009)

    Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  17. Holy Lands (2019)

    When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  18. In This World (2003)

    Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  19. The Kindness of Strangers (2019)

    Clara and her two sons escape from her abusive husband with little more than their car and plan to start over in New York. After the car towed away, the family meets Alice, who gets them into an emergency shelter. While stealing food at a Russian restaurant called ‘Winter Palace’, Clara meets Marc, who has been given the chance to help the old eatery regain its former glory. The ‘Winter Palace’ soon becomes a place of unexpected encounters between people who are all undergoing some sort of crisis and whom fate has now brought together.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Popcorn FlickMovies like this
  20. Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)

    A prisoner leads his counterparts in a protest for better living conditions which turns violent and ugly.

    Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama

    Worth the HypeMovies like this
  21. Space in the Brain (1969)

    Image analysis in slow motion. Distortion and reversed reality perspective.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  22. Eva Maria (2013)

    At the beaches of Aracaju(Brazil), popsicle sellers believe in the myth of a girl dressed in white called Eva Maria.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  23. Uzi's Party (2015)

    Five teenage girls gather for a party. Tensions mount as the guests exchange makeovers and hurl accusations. Tears in the bathroom lead to a ghostly kiss. In a circle around the Ouija board, they invoke a spirit. Their faces float in blackness. Five pairs of painted nails caress the planchette as it moves, swirling pale arms behind it. Our host becomes possessed. The characters overlap. Which of these women is not herself? Uzi's Party is a short experimental narrative written, directed and edited by Lyra Hill. All five characters are played by her sister Johanna Hill. Uzi's Party was filmed entirely in-camera on 16mm film, by means of intricately plotted multiple exposures and a cast of thirteen body doubles.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  24. The Astronaut (2017)

    A short film recounting the travels of a lonely astronaut confronted by the unknown. Unfolding as a mystery, it becomes a carefully subtle, autobiographical examination of the feeling of loneliness and the existential issue of not understanding life on earth and ones place among it.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  25. About Buenos Aires (2006)

    Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  26. Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947)

    An attempt to bring the work of surrealist artists to a wider public. The plot is that of an average Joe who can conjure up dreams that will improve his customer's lives. This frame story serves as a link between several avant-garde sequences created by leading visual artists of their day, most of whom were emigres to the US during WWII.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  27. Bear (1993)

    Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  28. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987)

    The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

    Worth the HypeMovies like this
  29. Chelsea Girls (1966)

    Follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

  30. Islands (2017)

    A sexual reverie unfolds over the course of one ethereal night. Characters wander through an erotic maze of love and lust, blurring the lines between wet dream and lucid nightmare as a macabre, erotic stage performance sends a ripple of lustful desires through its audience and performers.

    Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama

Like Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats) and something else?

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Frequently asked questions

What are the best movies like Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats)?

The closest matches to Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats) are Come Sunday (2018), Hounddog (2008) and All Day and a Night (2020). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.

What should I watch after Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats)?

Start with Come Sunday (2018), the closest match to Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats).

What is the highest-rated movie like Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats)?

What Maisie Knew (2013), rated 7.1/10 by 466 TMDB users.

What is the newest movie like Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats)?

Home (2021) is the most recent release on this list.

How are movies similar to Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats) chosen?

First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Fear in the City (1181 Days Later or Smell of Rats), then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.

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